Category Archives: Issue 16

“As with Ramage’s previous Freddie Babington story we are thrown straight in at the deep end. We the readers have two choices: go with the flow or take copious notes. I took the latter route, but wasn’t sure that it helped me much. There are detailed descriptions of locations and family kinships, an emerging chronology of events and individual revelations. We’ll expect the usual red herrings and misdirections, of course, but like many a good writer of the ‘cozy’ genre the final denouement will have been clearly signposted if only we had the wit to spot it early on.”Return of the gentleman sleuth, by Calmgrove, June 20, 2016

The Abrupt Disappearance of Cousin Wilfrid

A murder mystery set in the 1920s. This story begins shortly after Freddie Babington’s first investigation in “Death Among the Marshes.”

1

Abbotshill had never been Frederick Babington’s home, but he was as fond of it as he was the environs of Marsh Hall. This tiny village ten miles from Ipswich had once been the site of a medieval abbey, now in ruins. In these modern times, a collection of quaint cottages, a post office, and a brown-timbered tavern sat at the convergence of five country lanes on one side of a mill pond. On the other side of the pond was the old mill with its enormous wheel, more cottages, and shops around a green. The Mill Wheel Inn sat adjacent to an on-request railway platform.

Babingtons had owned the former abbey lands since the days of the Reformation and had been a prominent family in the area for centuries. Many of them still lived in the vicinity… which was where the problem began.